
The Holberg Prize will be joined by the 2016 Holberg Laureate Stephen Greenblatt during a promotional tour to India between 30th January and 4th February.
Stephen Greenblatt is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. When he was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2016, the Holberg Committee referred to Greenblatt as “one of the most distinctive and influential voices in the humanities for four decades”, “a preeminent scholar of the Renaissance”, and “one of the most important Shakespeare scholars of his generation.”
Professor Greenblatt will be speaking at three events during his stay in India, the first two at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF): On 1st February, Greenblatt will join Scottish historian and JLF co-founder William Dalrymple for a conversation on the topic “The Swerve Revisited: How the World Became Modern”. On 2nd February, the JFL event with Greenblatt is entitled “Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud”.
On 4th February, Greenblatt will hold a public lecture at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi, entitled “The Master’s Books”. The lecture will explore the career of Christopher Marlowe, who, at the time of his murder, was the greatest writer of Elizabethan England. The event is organized in collaboration with Ashoka University.
“India is increasingly important globally in terms of academic excellence, intellectual labour and serious and meticulous scholarship within the humanities, social sciences, law and theology. For this reason, the Holberg Prize has chosen to prioritise India in our ambition to become both more well-known and more relevant outside the context of Europe and North America”, says Chair of the Holberg Board, Professor Jørgen Sejersted. “As anyone holding an academic position at a university, academy or other research institution may nominate candidates for the Prize, we hope more Indian academics may consider this. The deadline is 15th June each year”.
The Holberg Prize is one of the largest international prizes awarded annually to an outstanding researcher in the humanities, social sciences, law or theology. The Prize was established by the Norwegian Parliament in 2003 and is administered by the University of Bergen on behalf of the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. The Holberg Prize has a monetary value of NOK 6,000,000 and is awarded annually to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in the academic fields covered by the Prize.
The recipient’s name is announced in March each year, while the award is officially conferred during the Holberg Week in June, usually by HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway. Recent Holberg Laureates include Achille Mbembe (2024), Joan Martinez-Alier (2023), Sheila Jasanoff (2022) and Martha C. Nussbaum (2021).
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